Sustainable fabrication of solid-wire electric contacts: ultrasonic welding vs. soldering

Sustainable joining technologies are important manufacturing processes for the production of high-quality joints of electrical connections. High-quality connections must have high electrical and thermal conductivity to reduce energy losses during their lifetime, they must have high mechanical properties to achieve a long service life, and they must be manufactured with lower energy consumption. In this article, the properties of solid wire electrical contacts produced by ultrasonic welding and soldering were compared. Ultrasonic welding of thin solid copper wires was performed with a copper ring. A particular focus of this study is on the energy used to produce these joints. The research included electrical resistance, peel strength and tensile strength tests. The results of the electrical resistance showed similar electrical resistance between the two processes. The result of mechanical strength shows that ultrasonic joints achieved higher mechanical strength. The most important result is that ultrasonic welding consumed only 11% of the energy to produce the joint compared to soldered joints.